A tale of disaster
by imadiehardpjofan
Summary: When Hagrid comes to retrieve young Harry Potter from the Dursleys, Harry has a number of questions for him. He doesn't like the answers very much.


Chapter 1 – A tale of disaster

Harry Asks Hagrid Some Questions

Harry was thrilled, but also a little confused. A gigantic man – far taller than any ordinary human being could have possibly been – had showed up, intimidated his _aunt and uncle_ , and even given Dudley a pig's tail. And then he offered an explanation for why so many strange things had happened that he remembered.

Turning a teacher's hair blue. Talking to a snake. _Vanishing_ the glass that kept the snake imprisoned. Even the things from his dreams – the flying motorcycle. A wizard must have enchanted it. And the flash of green light that haunted his nightmares. And the giant man – Hagrid, he called himself – had told him he was the only survivor of an attack that had claimed the lives of his whole family, but somehow the most dangerous wizard of all time's power had simply _broken_ when he tried to kill him. And that that was how he got his scar. It was magic.

And he was famous. _Famous._ The wizarding world knew of him and hailed him as "the Boy Who Lived." It explained why Crockford, Diggle, and Quirrell had been so anxious to meet him. Why Ollivander took such notice of him in particular, when he must have examined hundreds of new wizards over the years. They had wanted to thank the _wizard_ – and wasn't that a strange thought – who had stopped Voldemort's reign of terror. No one had ever survived that spell, Hagrid had told him. No one except _him_. Even amongst the goblins, his name meant great things.

The giant had told him he had the potential to be a great wizard, and Harry agreed. The fact that it would anger Uncle Vernon only made him more determined to go to the wizard school. And maybe, one day, he'd learn enough to be able to defend himself from his relatives.

And maybe, one day, he'd learn enough to curse his relatives to smithereens.

"You all right, Harry?" Hagrid asked. "Yer very quiet."

"Yeah," Harry said, "I was thinking of my relatives." Hagrid scowled. "Best na' ter think o' them, tha less yeh do, tha better."

"I mean," Harry said, waving his arms around, "if – if I'm _famous_ – and all of these wizards and witches were so eager to meet me, and _I'm_ the one who defeated Vol-"

Hagrid flinched, " _Don't say tha name_ , Harry."

"I won't be scared of a _name_ ," the young boy said, staring defiantly back at the giant. In the back of his head, he wondered if this was really such a good idea, when the giant had effortlessly snatched Vernon's shotgun from his hands. "But if all of them love me so much, why did I live with the _Dursleys_?"

Hagrid shifted, looking uncomfortable. "Well," he began at last, "it were on Dumbledore's orders. Meself, I didn' like tha' idea very much, but Dumbledore's never bin wrong before and he said it was fer yer safety, so you'd git protection from You-Know-Who's servants. Some o' them still want revenge for thar master."

Harry sat bolt upright. "He had _servants_?" _Right, of course he did,_ he thought to himself. Every one of the bad sort had lots of devoted, stupid followers ready to obey them. Whether they were a Muggle – like Dudley, having his gang for 'Harry Hunting,' or Voldemort, in which case he had a 'wizard gang.' Voldemort was really a larger scale Dudley Dursley, or Uncle Vernon. But they must have operated in much the same way. "Are they still around? And which ones should I be most careful around?"

The next few seconds were most enlightening to the young wizard. He learned about Death Eaters who'd talked their way free at the end of the last war – Bulstrode, Montague, Flint, Warrington, Crabbe, Goyle, Avery, Nott, Parkinson, and Lucius Malfoy, who claimed that they had been under Voldemort's enchantment in order to get away with their crimes. But Hagrid, like many others, didn't believe they were sincere. And this explained something about Draco's obsession with "proper wizards."

A horrible image was forming in Harry's head. The obsession with proper wizards, the beliefs that wizards born of Muggle descent shouldn't even be allowed to attend Hogwarts – that was Draco, but Harry was willing to bet his glasses that Lucius had taught that to him. And Lucius had served Voldemort…

"So was Voldemort-" Hagrid yelped again. "Fer Merlin's sake-" he started. Harry rolled his eyes. Why was he so scared of a _name_?

"So was he also obsessed with this 'proper wizard' nonsense, about not allowing children of Muggles…" Harry trailed off, unsure how to word his question. But Hagrid was nodding. "Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, You-Know-Who were always obsessed with 'proper wizarding stock.' Load of old tosh, but plenty o' people believed him."

And then many of the murderers had only needed to bribe the Ministry in order to get away with it. Voldemort's servants, it seems, had friends in high places… or perhaps sympathizers. The image of the Wizarding World, formerly a bright one full of wonders and amazements that Harry could scarcely have dreamed of… seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer by the moment.

But did it explain why he lived with the Dursleys?

 _"_ _It were on Dumbledore's orders," Hagrid said. "Meself, I didn' like tha' idea very much, but Dumbledore's never bin wrong before and he said it was fer yer safety, so you'd git protection from You-Know-Who's servants. Some o' them still want revenge for thar master."_

Were Voldemort's servants really _that_ powerful, that he wouldn't have been safe from them anywhere in the wizarding world?

"If I needed protecting from _his_ servants," Harry said, "why didn't Dumbledore raise me himself, if he was the only one that _he_ ever feared? He could have kept them at bay. I would've been happier, _and_ safer."

Hagrid replied, "Dumbledore said you'd never be safer in all the world than if you were at the Dursleys."

Harry stared at the big man, incredulously. " _Safe_?" he blurted, the words spilling out of his mouth. Normally, he would have been much more hesitant about spilling out all the details of his life to a man he'd only just met, but he'd had ten years of anger at how the Dursleys had treated him. He _knew_ this wasn't how functional families treated the children they raised. But no one had _ever_ listened, paid attention, or believed that there could be something wrong with the 'normal' Dursleys. Ten years of anger and rage – anger with no outlet, rage with no conduit. Ten years of rage, that spilled over at last, targeting Hogwarts' Keeper of the Keys.

"How the _hell_ was I _safe_ there?" demanded Harry, looking truly angry now. "Safe from the followers of Voldemort, maybe, but _not from the Dursleys_! I slept in a _cupboard_ instead of a bedroom, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would _deny me meals_ , and you claim that I was _safe_? They only let me go to the bathroom _twice_ in _one day_! Did Dumbledore _know-"_ and then Harry paused, suddenly remembering what the large man had done when Vernon had insulted Dumbledore. Harry stood no chance against such a man, and his loyalty to the Headmaster seemed absolute. And he was now realizing he'd just revealed an _awful_ lot of information…

Hagrid sighed, suddenly looking very old and tired. Harry didn't trust the image that the man gave off. He'd seemed cool when he was threatening Vernon and giving Dudley a pig's tail, but if he had followed Dumbledore's orders to have him live ten of the first eleven years of his life with the Dursleys…

"Dumbledore said it were the best place-" Hagrid began. Harry tuned him out. He knew he wouldn't be able to trust Hagrid, or Dumbledore, with his well-being. But that wasn't surprising. For Harry, authority figures had always been useless. And Dumbledore was a Headmaster.

And he couldn't trust Voldemort or his followers to do anything except for try to kill him. The fact that there was at least one son of a Voldemort follower in Hogwarts – Lucius Malfoy's son – meant that he'd have to be very, very careful.

And learn magic very, _very_ quickly.


End file.
